Thursday, August 2, 2012

A horrifying amateur video from Syria emerged online, showing an apparent mass execution of pro-government forces in Aleppo at the hands of rebels from the Free Syria Army.

The footage shows several bloodied men stripped down to their underwear being forced to kneel by a wall amidst a throng of excited, machine gun-touting men.

Once their captors open fire, the camera jerks away as the crowd momentarily disperses, seemingly unprepared for the nearly 40 seconds of uninterrupted shooting that follows.As the gunfire dies down, shouts of“Allahu Akbar!” resound as the once skittish onlookers victoriously raise their guns in the air, approaching what appears to be a pile of stripped-down corpses.

One of the victims has been identified as Ali Zeineddin al-Berri, who has been accused of leading a shabiha group which killed 15 FSA soldiers during a truce in Aleppo on Tuesday, BBC reports.

The video depicting the apparent massacre has not been verified, though the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said such vengeance was a crime as Islamic law does not authorize the execution of prisoners.

Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told BBC News: "What it looks like is execution of detainees and if that is the case, that would be a war crime."

The dust is slowly settling in the Damascus, where Syrian govt troops have repelled rebel forces. Authorities are now encountering spasms of social unrest, as residents try to reassemble the pieces of their broken lives.